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A polar bear is feeding on a walrus, in the soft evening light, close to a whole colony of walruses. We approach them slowly with two small boats. The bear decides to leave the carcass and take a closer look at us. Polar bears swim surprisingly fast.

The view back on the track of my sledge. Crossing Greenland in 2013, I learn about the monotony of the ice. White, ice, nothing but ice and white, 560 km, 28 days. Who crosses Greenland returns different, they say. It is true.

In April 2010 I am left on the Polar Ocean together with Thomas Ulrich. Months of training, preparation and planning condense in this single moment. Here we go! We want to reach the North Pole, starting at the Last Degree. The ice is drifting southwards, and a race against time starts. We are winning.

In summer 2007 I go to the North Pole for the first time, as a journalist on board the icebreaker Yamal. For the first time I see the frozen polar ocean, the light of the Arctic, I see fogbows, Franz Joseph Land and polar bears. The voyage takes 16 days. They change my life forever.

Franz Joseph Land and Greenland have one thing in common: It is impossible to capture the stunning beauty of the landscape in a photograph. There is always something missing, it is always only a small cutout of the wonderful entirety. Maybe it is the feeling that is missing. In Franz Joseph Land you are aware that there have never been many people around. There is something about these islands I have never felt anywhere else.

The animals snort, they slowly circle around themselves. Then they raise up, they are so much bigger than expected, they attack and bite. When they fall down on their paws you feel the earth shiver. They become wedged into each other, and leave again. Polar bears are fantastic creatures.

Broken ice, as far as you can see: Going to the North Pole in 2010, we have to negotiate enormous ice fields in which ice chunks of several meter height have shuffled one above the other. Thomas Ulrich teaches me to find a safe way through this chaos.

Jan Mayen is probably one of the cloudiest and inhospitable places on earth. The Austrians have built here a research station during the First International Polar Year in 1882/83, initiated by Carl Weyprecht. He died before it happened. In 2009 his great grand-niece closes a circle. When we find the station, we pop some corks.

You never know your friends from your enemies, until the ice breaks. That is a Greenlandic saying. Crossing Greenland in 2013, we meet Bengt and his group on day 22. I know Bengt from my second North Pole Trip. According to the mentioned Greenlandic definition, I know ever since: We are friends.

When I reach Isortoq in 2013, after my Crossing of Greenland, I realize that there are a lot more stories waiting to be told. The living legend Robert Peroni invites me in 2015 to spend some time in Tasiilaq in East Greenland. I return several times and start writing a new book.

I hold speeches for executives, decision makers and leaders, as a patron of sports events or as a guest lecturer, in schools, on ships, in the Arctic and in Antarctica, from 20 minutes to two hours. Let´s talk about your ideas!

The Arctic is within your reach, too! I travel in the high North since almost 10 years. With me you find a competent and enthusiastic specialist advisor for your Arctic travels. It is a true pleasure for me to find a voyage for you that really suits you.

I work as a guide since 2008, since 2014 also as an expedition leader. Besides of providing safety and happines, while guiding I also work on raising awareness for our fragile ecosystem and how little it takes to treat our world a bit better.